


Park & Park Paranormal Investigations, LLC

by shakeit_dontbreakit



Category: Produce 101 (TV), Wanna One (Band)
Genre: 2park, Gen, boys and their feelings, lots of banter, lots of blood, supernatural bounty hunters/paranormal investigation au, tinker jihoon and vlogger woojin, we fight ghosts with science and doors with flamethrowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-15 23:58:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13042272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shakeit_dontbreakit/pseuds/shakeit_dontbreakit
Summary: Jihoon tosses the sphere of antithetical astral plasma between his hands a few times confidently until on his third toss he almost drops it. Like a proud cat after a failed jump, Jihoon just pretends it didn’t happen. "Your bounty is going to cover my partner's medical bills.”





	Park & Park Paranormal Investigations, LLC

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deliveryservice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliveryservice/gifts).



> hi hi okay your prompt was pretty much smack dab in my wheelhouse (supernatural + fluff * banter - horror) but my contrary brain supplies: _lol nah_. 
> 
> i mean what's a ghost hunt without a bit of blood and peril
> 
> i'm sorry i'm a belligerent person and i tried to cut down but i betrayed myself immediately because the first four words of this are terrified swearing
> 
> these are my made-up ghost science terms:  
> spectral energy is what ghosts are  
> astral energy is antithetical to spectral energy  
> plasma is a conduit for volatile energies  
> i dont even know what incendiary salt is  
> astral/spectral frequency is what plane of reality the ghost lingers on  
> astral-spectral chemistry is trap and bomb making

 

"Fuckfuckfuckfuck—" Woojin pants under his breath as he sprints for his life down a musty, cavernous hallway. The century-old walls are lined with peeling wallpaper and a sickly bloodstained rug runs the length of the cramped corridor. Mounted on the walls every two meters or so are ancient yellow gas lamps that explode as soon as Woojin charges past them. Sure, he's fast enough to evade most of the damage but even he can’t avoid a few shards nicking his back and shoulders.

A pathway of absolute darkness hunts him at speed, coursing with a spectral pulse that shatters the lamps as the penumbra touches them. Decked out in a billowing wedding down, a pale, translucent woman screams out at him from the heart of the shadow, managing to shake the house in her anger. Clenched in Woojin’s fist is a 1920s pale gold filigree barrette that he totally just stole from under her nose, and the Ghost Widow is _not very pleased._

The gas lamp directly before him bursts right as he reaches it and with a quick yelp Woojin barely manages to cover his head in time to avoid a faceful of glass. Searing shards dig into his (idiotically) bare forearms but what the lamp exploding means is more alarming than what damage it manages to deal.

It means she’s actually gaining on him. Inch by perilous inch.

Yet another ghastly shriek rings out from behind but there’s an _edge_ to this one, so sharp and emotive that Woojin can taste it on his tongue. Somehow he stifles the instinct to cover his ears in order to maintain speed, but the note bounces between his temples even after the scream dies away. Woojin is agile with the endurance to match but still barely manages to keep more than a pace or two ahead of her shadow. This is going slightly worse than planned—only slightly though, the plan was pretty bad from the start. 

 _"YOOOUU DAAAARRE!?"_ shrieks the (very) late widow, and despite knowing full well that it will compromise the footage of his front and back-facing body cameras Woojin can’t help but cast a reflexive, split-second glance over his shoulder just to double check the danger level. Ah.

Yep, that’s a Category 5 malevolent spirit all right, decked out with all the spooky trimmings. He makes unfortunate eye contact with the screeching, 200-years-dead girl and instantly wishes he didn’t. Murdered by her husband on their wedding night, the teenage widow is still clad in her retro wedding finery, but unlike that tragic night today she’s glowing and has superpowers. Oh yeah, and she’s totally fucking pissed.

_"GIIIIIIIVVVEE IIITTT BAAACKK!!"_

_NOOO CAANN DOOOO,_ Woojin thinks, imitating the widow with his inner voice to distract himself from the fact that he's about three steps away from becoming her 57th victim. Focusing ahead once more, Woojin’s heart suddenly jumps into his throat when he realizes his situation. The end of the hallway ahead of him splits to the left and right but not forward and in the rush of both adrenaline and mortal fear Woojin completely blanks on the floor plan of the haunted mansion. Shit.

Instinct pulls him to the left but he’s coming in too fast to make a regular turn and ends up pushing off against the wall in front to avoid crashing straight into it. He manages to use this shift in momentum to his advantage and barely loses a second in the maneuver. _Go go move go fucking FLY_.

The ghost widow had no way of knowing which direction he would choose but it doesn't even matter—Woojin again looks back to see the her charge too far, too blindly, passing straight through the wall he had pushed off to make his turn. Incorporeality does have its downsides. He gains six more long strides before she manages to correct her course, floating back through the wall in hot pursuit. 

Despite his well earned lead her sharp, tragic scream tells Woojin he's even closer to death now. Spatially and literally. Hell, _and_ professionally. Conceptually. Everything, Woojin is just all up on death these days.

 _SURVIVE_ , he reminds himself.

The path he turned down is half as long as the one he left and eventually empties out into a long hall running perpendicular to his hallway passage. This new hallway is one of the final checkpoints before he can reach some semblance of safety—somehow, by some lucky stroke he chose the correct direction at the split. _Go go go go go faster faster go faster,_ circles through his mind like a litany and it’s with a terrified, giddy laugh that Woojin propels himself out of the hallway and into the long, wide clearing. _I AM going to survive this,_ he promises mid-jump, twisting his hips in an attempt to preemptively course correct while still in the air.

The main hall is some six meters wide and extends further than he can see, much bigger than the narrow, collapsing passageways he's been navigating so far. In this part of the mansion the ceiling extends a floor higher as if it had been specifically designed to accommodate the comically large paintings of serious-looking old dudes hanging on the walls. Instead of the mounted gas lamps from before this hall is lit with a pale glow from a series of hanging gas crystal chandeliers, most lacking all but a few of their lights. What crystals remain fixed in place after all this time further diffuse the clammy light over the once-red and once-ornate rug that stretches nearly as wide as the hall itself. 

Right as Woojin lands he pushes cleanly into a hard right turn and tears down the hall, footfalls pounding loudly over the covered floorboards. The chandelier in the direction he didn't turn explodes with a sharp shriek and a lingering ringing in his ears. _Wrong way again, you long-dead bitch. I’m not dying here._

Forward, forward, each stride brings him closer to safety but Woojin isn’t out of this haunted bear trap just yet. In fact, he may never leave. The last obstacle Woojin has to deal with (besides the sinister ghost of a bitter old soul, obviously) is the large gaping hole in the floor. It’s about two meters across and stretches the entire width of the hall and since he happened to forget his pole for this particular vault, Woojin has to jump it.

If he manages to survive long enough to actually make the leap, once he reaches the end of the hall the floor will shift into the descending marble steps of a grand staircase. It drops from the mouth of the second floor to a middle landing like a lazy tongue. The landing doesn’t proceed very far forward, instead splitting in opposite directions to make two curving staircases that twist down to the ground level. Matching marble banisters line the staircase, and all in all it’s probably the sturdiest thing in the mansion.

This 200 year old, Disney-caliber grand staircase will be the location of the final showdown. 

Woojin must get past that first half-floor flight of stairs—there’s no other way for him to get out of this alive. Desperate perhaps, but he likes to set realistic expectations of mortal peril when he finds himself knee-deep in it. 

Tearing towards the top of the staircase ahead, Woojin passes underneath another chandelier only half a heartbeat before the Widow annihilates it in an explosion of crystal shards. The blast of spectral energy is the largest yet, rushing harshly through Woojin’s blood, dulling his senses and reaction time. Despite the power of the spectral assault he manages to bring his arms behind his head and duck while running in order to avoid at least some of the flying shards. Woojin feels one, two stick into his back and between his ribs, cold as ice and much worse than the lamp glass from before. 

The Ghost Widow is getting way too close, _but so is he_. It's probably (definitely) not the time for it, but Woojin reasons this is the stage in the boss fight when they're on the dregs of their hit points and increase their power and speed twofold. If you're not ready for the power-up, you can consider yourse— _oh shit it's right there._

Suddenly the chasm in the floor is a breath ahead and then Woojin just clears it with a fluid leap before even mentally registering that he had to make the jump. Adrenaline, take the wheel. The floorboards creak and one of them cracks under his feet as he lands but Woojin’s velocity and agility take him through the danger as quickly as he had jumped. He’s relatively home free—if you forget about the spooky murder-machine a few steps behind him. With new energy he pushes everything into his legs to make the most of the last few meters before this would all be decided.

 _“YOOU WIILLL JOOIIIN MYYYY DEEEAAAD!”_ The Ghost Widow promises, and Woojin actually barks out a laugh. For better or for worse, this ends here.

Five steps left and Woojin can start to see out into the dusky entrance hall, lit weakly by a grand chandelier with only two small lamps still functioning. _Go go go GO GO!_ Three steps away, now one, and then Woojin reaches the top step of the staircase perfectly before _launching_ himself out into the air in a roaring leap of thoughtless abandon.

Time seems to takes on a new form as Woojin soars through the air. He can see everything at once—the cobweb-wrapped grand chandelier towering over the hall—the two cameras mounted on the balcony aiming straight at him—the spot where he intends to land his jump about three meters out. He sees Jihoon crouching near his trap perimeter on the landing, the lenses of his bulky night-vision goggles glowing a dim green even in the gloom.

The widow bellows from behind him but by the time she reaches the top of the stairs Woojin is already halfway through his jump. She's charging after him too wildly to notice she’s about to float right over an improbable trap. Improbable here meaning idiotic, but hey, cluttered genius is still genius.

It’s all charmingly messy: a series of nodes set up along the edges of the flight of stairs in a rough rectangle. About ten centimeters tall, each device looks like a miniature satellite dish mounted on a spindly tripod, each pointing up and inward. The end of the antennas flash on and off like fireflies, alternating between red and blue. They’re connected haphazardly by strings of small wires and cords which themselves are a tangled mess held together somehow with twist-ties, half a roll of duct tape and two handfuls of bobby pins. Jihoon calls it resourceful, Woojin calls it cheap. They both call it their best (only) shot.

Owing to the trap’s placement around a descending flight of stairs and how idiotically enraged Woojin managed to make the ghost widow, she wouldn't be able to see it coming (in theory, of course). And even if she had enough wits about her to sense the antithetical astral energy in the trap, she wouldn’t have had enough time to react. Woojin’s role (bait, he’s always the bait) was to steal back an heirloom from the corpse of one of the Ghost Widow’s later victims. Now the terrifying and powerful ghost is livid enough to rush blindly into Jihoon’s antithetical-astral-frequency-meta-stasis-whatcha-ma-call-it.

Woojin is still soaring through the air when all the lights of the trap nodes glow yellow in unison and Jihoon belts, “NOPE!”

The widow is more than halfway over the stairs, reaching one long arm towards Woojin in a desperate final grab but the trap fully activates with the synchronous beep of 20 small devices in the nick of time. A ripple of the trap’s antithetical energy rolls up his spine as each node discharges a thin stream of buzzing golden energy. He passes through a good fourth of the streams without corporeal effect but the rest accurately hit the Widow and hold her dead in place.

Despite the apparent victory a rush of cold air ruffles Woojin’s hair and makes the hairs on his neck stand on end. He doesn’t have to cast another glance back to know that the Widow’s last grab probably missed him by barely more than a hand’s length.

_That was a little close..._

As soon as the astral streams made contact with the Ghost Widow, the energy propagated and completely enveloped her in a thin layer of translucent golden light—astral energy to be precise, tuned to the exact same dimensional frequency as the spectral energy that made up the Ghost Widow. She’s not going anywhere.

So yeah, maybe Jihoon activated the trap (terrifyingly) late but to his credit everything was moving very fast and in the dark no less. It’s still mind boggling that he could even design a trap specifically for the Ghost Widow at all, despite the fact that Woojin had been right by Jihoon’s side for the last _week_ helping him hone in on her unique spectral frequency and watching him build the antithetical trap system from scratch. 

With a harsh yelp Woojin lands on the middle landing in an uncontrolled roll and barrels headlong into the sturdy marble banister guarding the edge of the floor. Not only does he knock his skull hard enough to see stars, the inelegant somersault of a landing shoves the glass in his forearms and back deeper into his flesh. Not the best finish (not the best start either, let's be honest here) but the violent tumble does end neatly with his back against the balcony, giving Woojin a perfect view of their handiwork.

This is why. This is _exactly_ why despite Woojin having to protect his mad scientist from overworking himself into an early grave and almost dying every moment of acting as bait he thinks his role in this partnership is the easier job. Woojin can barely make a potato-clock and here Jihoon is walking around with the supernatural equivalent of IED in his pocket and a spare in his bag. This is what Jihoon brings to the ghost hunting table: the motherfucking science. Not to mention the investigative nose of a seasoned bounty hunter and true name-recognition in the supernatural community. Comparably, Woojin occasionally senses things and runs a lot.

But he _will_ pat himself on the back for today’s splendid performance as human bait and also for what saintlike tolerance was needed to put up with Jihoon during the ‘tinkering hours’ that led up to this capture. Calling them ‘tinkering hours’ makes it sound quite cute and harmless, but in fact it’s a sleepless rollercoaster of manic unpredictability and aggressive mechanical engineering. Woojin really has no choice but to dive down the rabbit hole with him, if only to make sure he eats and sleeps enough to make it back out of tinker town.

Woojin may be sprawled messily against the balcony railing, he may be bleeding a bit more than is advisable, but he can still appreciate how overwhelming the trap is for the poor Ghost Widow. More specifically, how even she seems to know how deep of shit she’s in.

The trap cancels out the ghastly aura of darkness and the Ghost Widow is completely suspended in a blob of antithetical astral propagation (Woojin has taken to call it slow-motion honey) and isn't going anywhere. Her extended arm is still reaching out with comical slowness and her muffled shrieks now ring with futility and fear. For the first time in centuries the Ghost Widow fears for her existence. Caught, trapped, stuck in some seriously sticky honey, she's no longer intimidating. Instead the long slit across her throat sparks a sliver of pity in Woojin’s heart. She was once alive. She was tricked, betrayed, then murdered. Now, more than 200 years after her birth her rage lingered on and spiraled into ghostly psychopathy. _She was once just a normal person, like us_.

But now she’s a writhing mess of emotionally charged spectral energy.

Jihoon has been crouched down in the shadows of the landing balcony and tosses away his ignition switch as he shoots to his feet, slipping his goggles off and letting them hang around his neck. He walks slowly towards the Widow, eventually ending up right in front of Woojin as though guarding him from the pacified ghost.

How kind of him.

“Wow, you actually walked right into that one, didn’t you?” Jihoon finally asks her, so shittily, so condescendingly that Woojin actually winces. “The deadest, baddest bitch in decades done in by a _little human technology?_ ”

“You mispronounced  _overpowered post-death trap._ ” Woojin comments carefully, his pity gauge rising as he watches the widow try to power her way through the trap, making slow progress for a moment in a single direction before always being pulled back again. He may be still recovering from dashing like a maniac and bashing his head against a balcony railing but Woojin pulls himself up sloppily and achieves something that resembles standing. It might be more accurate to call it  _leaning._

Still proudly posed in front of him, Jihoon twists his upper body around to address Woojin’s little sass attack. There’s still a glimpse of that effortless superiority in Jihoon’s eyes, shining with the reflected light of the trap and perhaps a dash of malice. It’s a striking gaze, both lethal and dazzling.

Also, he probably has a concussion?

Woojin must look much worse than he assumed because the twisted mirth in Jihoon’s face shifts almost immediately into bug-eyed shock. “Wha—Woojin, holy shit, you are _cover_ —”

Whatever concern Jihoon offers is drowned out by a series of short bursts of desperate cries from the trapped Ghost Widow.

“I’ll be _fine.”_ Woojin shouts over the noise. Sure he’s a little loopy, bleeding from many points and absolutely gassed out but they’re not going to get the full bounty if they don’t finish her off. With one arm loosely securing himself to the balcony railing Woojin gestures at Jihoon to do his busting business with a surprisingly elegant shooing motion.

(Take the ‘elegant’ with a grain of concussion.)

"DOOOOOMMMED! YOU ARE BOOOTHH DOOOOOOMED!" The Ghost Widow rages and doubles her efforts to get out of the engineering nightmare but Jihoon’s focus is still entirely on Woojin. He waves him off once more and after a final lingering look Jihoon turns back to the task at hand.

In giddy, blooddrunk awe Woojin gapes as Jihoon manages to shift gears immediately, spreading his legs confidently and crossing his hands behind his back with noble composure. “I have to admit it was clever of you to separate and disperse your dusty ol' bones, and considering you don’t have another life-anchor we were left with this very violent and very dramatic Plan B—”

“—it’s Plan H.” Woojin is actually unable to stop himself from interrupting him. Concussion. “Technically.” He shuts up when Jihoon flicks him off with both of the hands crossed behind his back, not deigning to turn around and confront his snark again.

“We don’t have the resources or the patience to collect a hundred little bone fragments scattered around the country. Unfortunately for you, we _do_ have a natural rookie with a knack for survival and the sharpest sixth sense I’ve ever encountered—”

 _Wait, he’s talking about me._ Woojin is absolutely astounded, touched even, and that’s _more_ than the concussion talking.

“— _and_ the collected knowledge of five generations of supernatural hunters, wielded by the trapsmith of the decade.”

Ah. Well he could have seen _that_ one coming. When Jihoon puts it like that Woojin can start to believe that they are, in fact, pretty damn good at his supernatural investigation stuff.

Hanging limply on the balcony, Woojin wipes sweat from his forehead and freezes when catches a glimpse of his palm after. The entire hand is crimson with blood. Trepidation and a hint of nausea churn low in his gut, and despite knowing that head wounds bleed profusely regardless of severity Woojin wonders if he may have gone too far this time. He can't tear his eyes away from the red on his fingers (still so bright, so mortal even in the dimness of the haunted manor) and rubs the tips of his forefinger and thumb together, alarmed and mesmerized by the fact that he's bled this much.

Luckily Jihoon’s victorious gravitas is eventually enough to draw his attention away from the literal blood on his hands. "You almost killed my partner, you almost killed me, and you _actually_ killed a dog. I saw those bones in the cellar. A dog, you disgusting monster. Why? Why would you ever need to kill a _dog?"_

Somehow his priorities are comforting.

"Can we speed this up a smidge or four?" Woojin asks loopily. Jihoon turns his face back to him and his contained anger drips away into wide-eyed shock, as though he forgot the first time he saw that Woojin was bleeding. Maybe there’s just twice as much blood as before.

"Wow, okay. You're _really_ bleeding..." Jihoon tries to make light of the situation but the hard set of his jaw tells a different story.

"I'm probably about to be exsan... guin…"

"—nated." Jihoon supplies sincerely. It's really not the time for it, but he reaches into his over the shoulder bag and draws out a travel pack of tissues before handing it to Woojin with an apologetic wince. It's basically the equivalent of a thumbs up (double thumbs, tops) but the heart of the gesture is pure. That's most likely not just the concussion talking.

"Stop stalling and disperse this bitch." Woojin growls, plucking out a few tissues from the pack that stain red before he can even use them to mop up the mess on his forehead.

Jihoon holds eye contact with him for another tense moment before nodding gravely and twisting smoothly on his heel. He takes a deep breath before clapping his hands together. "Well, you heard the bleeding pin cushion…”

With a low, satisfied giggle, Jihoon extracts a baseball-sized glass sphere glowing bright purple and poppy from one of the hidden pockets in his bag. It’s another element of the hunt that was painstakingly designed for this ghost in particular. This time to destroy. “I suppose we have to use this cute little bomb here.”

He tosses the sphere of antithetical astral plasma between his hands a few times confidently until on his third toss he almost drops it. Like a proud cat after a failed jump, Jihoon just pretends it didn’t happen. "Your bounty is going to cover my partner's medical bills.”

It's all terrifying and captivating, just like this whole night as been. Just like the last 7 weeks have been. Woojin stumbles forward, eventually reaching Jihoon's side and looking up at the trapped widow in sloppy awe before looking down at the humming plasma ball in Jihoon’s gloved hands.

“So what, do you just… do you throw it at her?” The concussion running Woojin's mouth manages to shut down Jihoon’s aura of triumphant superiority in one fell swoop.

He barks out a laugh. “Well, yeah, actually.”

“Are we talking grenade-style or like, linedriv—” Before Woojin can finish, Jihoon gently tosses the plasma bomb in an underhand arc aimed right for her chest.

In the sliver of time before impact a small spark flashes in the back of Woojin’s mind and instinct compels him to turn away from the widow, grab Jihoon around the waist and start hauling the both of them as far away as they can get before Jihoon's latest concoction detonates. After one final burst of terror from the Widow, the sphere shatters cleanly against the astral bubble and Woojin hears (understands?) an even higher note, almost too high to be heard. Within the same moment, the radiant plasma explodes before they can make it two steps, bright as a firework and silent as space.

The plasmic blast and resulting astral-spectral shockwave packs enough of a punch to knock the wind out of their lungs and sends them crashing down to the marble floor. Everything feels caught in slow-motion in the deafening silence. Woojin, having been facing away from the blast, lands easily on his hands before impact with the floor but Jihoon falls flat on his back. The first sound that reaches Woojin's ears after the blast is Jihoon's wet gasp of pain—it echoes in his mind before all noise returns in an overwhelming rush.

Ears ringing with what he thinks (knows?) is the Ghost Widow’s frequency, Woojin struggles to get to his hands and knees, willing his diaphragm to relax so he can get at least one good breath in. He can feel his heart beating through his temples and tries to concentrate on that rather than his shaking limbs and the copper taste of blood in his mouth.

Having been facing the blast in wide-eyed awe when the explosion hit, Jihoon most certainly got the worst of it. He rolls over onto his side with a low whine, now facing Woojin with his gloved hands covering his eyes. “F-fah…fuh—”

“Breathe—Jihoon, just...” Woojin chokes out, collapsing down to Jihoon’s level and grabbing his forearm sloppily. “You… okay?”

“Fucking… _ow.”_ He pants, hands still covering his eyes. “We… fuck, we—we weren’t supposed to… _feel_ that... way too strong. Too… much.”

Woojin laughs at this which was a mistake because he should probably be wasting his breath on breathing. Still, he manages to recover his wind well before Jihoon and tries to help them both up into a sitting position despite how his limbs feel like lead weights. “You call that a cute little bomb?”

“I… well, let’s call it... an overpowered post-death bomb… how’s that?”

Why does Jihoon have to go around making people _laugh_ like that—Woojin only just got his breath back. They stay on the cool marble floor for a short minute before Woojin stumbles to his feet and holds out a hand for Jihoon but his partner either ignores him or doesn’t see the assistance and pushes himself up with a low moan.

“Bloody fucking Mary, dude.” He begins, shaking his head in disbelief. “I may have miscalculated the incendiary rating a little bit.”

 _A little bit?_ Woojin doesn’t know what an incendiary rating is, but absolutely nothing about that plasma bomb could be described as ‘a little’ or ‘a bit’. Jihoon is now busy inspecting the goggles around his neck and sighs when he troubleshoots and determines the night-vision and infrared are inoperable. One of the green lenses even has a crack running through it.

“I’m sorry.” He whispers, rubbing his forefinger over the crack with a tenderness Woojin doesn't often see from him. Eventually he looks out into the empty space of the huge grand hall and Woojin follows his gaze with a small gasp.

Particles of astral-spectral residue shine blue and peach and gold like will-o'-wisps bobbing in the night. They get caught in the soft, slow streams of translucent, rose-colored plasma trails traveling on the flows of air and curling out into nothingness. Woojin feels like he’s looking out into space, at evolving galaxies and looping comet trails. Such a sight is wholeheartedly worth the concussion.

He’ll never see the stars intimately like this; they’ll always be cold and distant. This is warm, glowing, as present as Jihoon himself. A loose golden dot of light from far above them drifts away from its cluster of decomposing particles and drifts slowly down to their level. Woojin blows at it, laughing to himself when it catches the gust and wafts away into the hall.

He wonders if Jihoon is as moved by the sight of all this as he, but when he looks over at him he finds that Jihoon has been focusing on _him—_ shooting him a charged look, brows furrowed in worry and anger. As soon as Woojin matches his gaze Jihoon quickly looks down to his feet. "I'm… I really am sorry, I had no idea... seriously, I didn't know it would be this fucking dangerous. We’re never using this strategy ever again.”

Woojin doubts this but he keeps it to himself, reaching out again, this time towards an entire cluster of purple and orange lights drifting by. Holding his breath, he dips his middle and pointer fingers into the glow. He doesn’t see, hear, or feel a thing but does understand (experience?) a tiny ripple of awareness—some small flicker in the back of his mind. That would probably be the sixth sense Jihoon so uncharacteristically lauded, the one that tried to warn him how dangerous the plasma blast would be.

In reaching out Woojin reveals his bloody forearm and Jihoon drops his voice down into a deep snarl. “How… Woojin what the hell?”

To Woojin’s extreme surprise Jihoon scoffs and wraps an arm tightly around his waist to support him, stiffly refusing to make any eye contact. Uncharacteristic ( _notably_ uncharacteristic) behavior from Park “Personal Space” Jihoon, but Woojin is just _too_ concussed to delve deeper into his behavior. He’s tired, he’s messed up and his brain is bruised so he gratefully leans into Jihoon’s support and tries not to overthink it.

 _I’m probably getting blood all over him,_ Woojin observes to absolutely nobody.

Tucked into each other like this they take a moment to survey the aftermath of the destruction, lit dimly but warmly by the glowing moats and eddies of residual astral-spectral energy. The remains glow speck by speck, following the soft drafts of air in the spacious great hall. Some of the streams curl and loop like flows of water while others are now quickly dissipating like gas. The larger, heavier lights flurry and fall like lazy snowflakes. After looking up for a moment Woojin considers holding out his tongue to catch one before realizing, _oh, hey, probably not supposed to eat this stuff._

The drifting lights are nothing short of magical but the scene they reveal comes straight out of a Sci-Fi miniseries. Unquestionably the explosion and resulting shockwave completely overwhelmed the electrical wiring of Jihoon’s trap devices and even went so far as to topple most of them (even Woojin knows this wasn't supposed to happen, which is a real testament to how powerful the chemical reaction really was.) Bright blue sparks occasionally jump from the overblown wiring, and right before their eyes one of the nodes slips off the edge of the staircase and starts pulling the whole lot of them down with enough noise to wake even more of the dead. Finally the last node rolls off and the whole trap hits the marble floor below with an echoing crash.

With trepidation, Jihoon turns himself and Woojin around slowly to inspect the two mounted video cameras they set up to capture the boss fight. Both had been secured to the very railing that bruised Woojin’s brain, and only one of them remains. Apparently the blast packed enough of a punch to blow one of them clean away.

After leaning Woojin against the railing Jihoon inspects the remaining camera, tilting his head and tapping his toe before deciding it _may_ have survived. He goes to work collapsing the mount and settling it all in one of the camera cases that he slings over his shoulder with a wince. Walking over to where he laid in wait for the Widow, he locates the trigger console and after another brief deliberation kicks it clear off the landing.

“What the hell!?” Woojin cries out, straining his eyes to see where the console may have landed on the floor below.

“If it knocked out my goggles, it stands to reason that no other electrical or firmware systems would have survived that blast. It's now nothing but an expensive paperweight.” Jihoon’s voice is firm and Woojin realizes he’s saying this more to convince himself to part with his precious tech than anything.

After another quick glance around the staircase and landing, Jihoon hauls his bag of engineering miscellany over his shoulder and stacks it awkwardly on top of the camera bag before turning to Woojin.

“Shit, I thought that might have happened too.” He sags in place with a huge sigh before gesturing at Woojin, who (idiotically, concussively, whatever) turns around to look over his shoulder as though Jihoon was indicating something behind him. _Oh, he’s pointing at me._

Specifically, at his smashed front body camera. His stomach drops in horror and he twists an arm around his back and finds that his back camera is simply gone. Woojin’s rolling crash landing destroyed their action footage. “Oh, come on! I was _so close_ to dying _—_ the footage was going to be  _phenomenal._ "

“Let’s just hope the surviving camera… you know, survived.” Jihoon pats the camera case slung over his shoulder, but he looks doubtful. “Okay, come ‘ere.”

Jihoon obeys his own order and approaches Woojin on the balcony, rearranging the two bags on his right side before slipping his free left arm around Woojin's waist once more and lifting him gently off the railing with a small _"oof"._  After snuggling in just a bit closer (Woojin tries not to think about how sweet he's being, how much he's willing to _touch_ him) he turns them both around to look out at the light show once more.

The rivers of orange and purple flowing through the air have been trailing into nothingness while the spots of drifting light diminish slowly. With each quiet, intimate heartbeat the hall grows slowly dimmer. Dizzy, exhausted, and now practically blind, it’s only Woojin’s physical contact to Jihoon that orients him. Now that things are cooling off, that his breathing has regulated, he realizes he’s had his fist clenched tightly around the gilded filigree hair clip for the last fifteen minutes. He pockets the trinket with a small smile before joining Jihoon in looking out into the darkness of the hall.

This very moment, watching the rivers of spectral decay drift into nothing, is truly worth the struggle bus they rode to get here. It might even be worth _all_ the bullshit the supernatural world has thrown at him so far. It’s beautiful, peaceful, and Woojin notes that even Jihoon (who has most likely seen dozens of spectral decompositions of this caliber before) is now as spellbound as he.

There’s poetry in the sight, both heartening and wistful. Woojin tries to put words to the sudden flicker of understanding, tries to express the sensation but nothing he has ever known can capture that otherworldly melancholy. It figures that as soon as he starts to get a handle on his sixth sense the first thing he wholeheartedly understands about it is that he will never be able to fully articulate this comprehension. Not to anyone.

It almost breaks his heart. This is, has been, and will always be Jihoon's world, but he'll never really  _get it_ like Woojin does. Maybe with more training he'll be able to share this profound  _something_ with him. Jihoon has already given him so much through this partnership, so much more than Woojin would have ever known without him. He wonders if Jihoon holds it against him, but then again Woojin is a little jealous that Jihoon packs enough mechanical engineering chops to both create and destroy a mid-sized town.  

The last of the decomposing light disperses with a soft whisper and they’re cast into perfect darkness. By some unspoken agreement they stay still and quiet until their heartbeats return to normal. 

“So that was bonkers.” Woojin eventually comments succinctly, his voice echoing slightly in the open space.

Jihoon barks out a quiet laugh and Woojin can feel him shaking his head. “As soon as we emerge into daylight I’m going to concussion protocol the hell out of you.”

One arm wrapped around Woojin’s waist, Jihoon digs into his bag for for his phone with the other, fumbling in the dark before he manages to turn on the LED flashlight. The sudden power of the light is painful on a bruised brain and Woojin turns his face away from the source with a low whine.

With a small laugh at Woojin’s flinch, Jihoon begins to lead the two of them across the landing to the nearest of the descending staircases. After they make it down the first few steps, he asks, “You okay?”

Jihoon speaks very low, stronger than a whisper but softer than an indoor voice. Woojin matches the volume as they begin to take one step at a time. “I want barbeque.”

The request is odd given the circumstances but Jihoon manages to make the leap from _bleeding a lot_ to _replenish iron with a meat feast._ “I’ll buy you meat after we go to the hospital and get that head checked out.”

“Don’t forget the glass too. That’s the hurty one.”

"Well that's not a word, but I'll give it to you." Jihoon laughs. "We got this.”

We? For Woojin being ‘the muscle’ of the duo, Jihoon is really hard carrying right now with bags on bags, lugging a blooddrunk man slightly larger than himself. They finally make it to the ground floors and Jihoon shines the light over the heap of wire and metal that was once their antithetical trap. “That’s a shame, though. Maybe I can come back and salvage.”

Normally Jihoon would never leave his tech behind, let alone be so blasé about it but a lot of his behavior today has been unexpected, even uncharacteristic. Raking his bruised brains, Woojin tries to remember the last time they had been this physically close and laughs out loud when he realizes this has never happened before.

“We totally underestimated her.” Jihoon admits once they’re about halfway across the great hall. He’s speaking softly but their voices and unsteady footsteps still carry into the open space, bouncing back faintly. By now their light just barely reaches a series of gaudy marble pillars and the looming front doors slightly further away.

Woojin chuckles good-naturedly. “I think you underestimated your plasma bomb.”

Normally plasma bombs don’t have enough juice to physically affect tangible objects, but Jihoon packed his glass globe with highly concentrated astral plasma, a few fingers of spectral energy, and (perhaps a bit too much) incendiary salt to tie it all together. Their electronics didn’t stand a chance, but even Jihoon couldn’t have expected the strength of the blast—he always says astral-spectral chemistry is more an art than a science, and today definitely proved that.

They trudge further in silence, getting slowly closer to fresh air and natural light. When they finally reach the front doors Jihoon angles them both so he can reach for the large door handle and push at it, but it doesn’t give an inch. He tries pushing the other door and meets the same fate. “What the fuck is this, it’s not supposed to be lock—”

Woojin simply _pulls_ the door handle instead of pushing and it opens up a hand’s width, letting in a slice of bright light that makes his head rush more than Jihoon’s phone light. Chains rattle from the outside, no doubt looped around the outside handles to keep people from entering. “So… it _is_  locked.”

Jihoon pulls the other door handle and it gets caught like the other though the gap is a bit wider with both doors slightly open. After violently pushing and pulling and achieving nothing but rattling the chains, Jihoon sighs loudly and shrugs off the two bags on his shoulder before leaning Woojin against one of the pillars a few steps away. “Hold tight, I will find _some way_ to deal with this.”

With an amused smile Woojin watches Jihoon hunch over and dig through his bag, muttering to himself. The marble pillar is cold against his back and Woojin angles himself so that his pounding forehead rests lightly against the cool stone. It doesn’t help much, but he will pretty much take anything at this point.

There’s a small, “Ah-hah!” from Jihoon and Woojin focuses on him again to see him extract a small handheld device from the bowels of his bag that looks very much like…

“Why do you have a flamethrower in your bag?” Woojin asks simply.

What’s stranger than the question is that Jihoon is looking back at him like _he’s_ the insane one. “For welding. How do you think I make shit, Woojin?”

Honestly? He thought it was just ingenuity and elbow grease. “Don’t tell me you’re going to burn the door down.”

Jihoon is still hunched over his bag, this time prepping his butane welding torch. His fingerless gloves are tightly fastened and his goggles are back on in order to handle the flamethrower as safely as he can given the circumstances. Woojin can see Jihoon biting his lip in the bright light being given off by the jet of flame before he grins at it like one might smile at a favorite pet or houseplant. “What I’m doing may eventually result in the door burning down, but no I do not intend to burn down the door.”

“Is this really the time to be playing riddles in the dark?” Woojin chastises, about 90% sure that Jihoon isn’t going to get the reference.

“Watch and learn, partner.” Jihoon does not get the reference, instead he chuckles to himself as he ignites the welding torch to its most powerful setting and springs to his feet. Woojin starts to formulate some joke combining ‘running with scissors’ and ‘flamethrowers’ but it goes nowhere and he’s far more interested in how Jihoon is _not_ going to burn down the door.

True to his word, Jihoon ends up using the jet of flame as a drilling tool to cut an uneven circle about a hand’s length wider than the handles, eventually punching out the center once he completes the loop. It falls outside to the ground with a noisy clatter and Jihoon grabs the still smoldering hole in the doors (protected from the heat by his engineering gloves) and pulls them inward with a triumphant, “Ya-HAH!”

He turns around to face Woojin with a beaming grin, shutting off his welding torch with a sincere laugh of success and packing it away before once more slinging both bags over his shoulders. Blinding light streams in from behind him and while most of Jihoon is cast into silhouette Woojin can still see his cheeks turning up in a heartfelt grin. “Look, I saved your precious doors.”

Something warm and fond flutters through Woojin’s chest and instead of bursting out into laughter (as he would have if he had more blood) he just hums to himself. “Thanks for that.”

He limps after Jihoon who has already jogged few steps out of the mansion before stoping in place to breathe in the natural air. Woojin has to cover his eyes slightly before they can adjust to the brightness—his sensitivity no doubt exacerbated by his probable concussion. He can smell crisp leaves and drying grass and uses this to center himself.

“We... actually did that.” Woojin mutters when he limps to Jihoon's side. "That totally fucking happened."

Jihoon laughs quietly as they both slip their arms around each others’ waists again and begin to amble across the huge grassy lawn of the Widow’s estate. “Congratulations on your first Category 5."

“Not too shabby for a novice, eh?” Woojin can’t really help it, he is in fact very proud of himself (and of Jihoon, but what he feels there isn’t pride so much as admiration) for managing to not die.

Jihoon hip checks him lightly. “I think it’s safe to say you’ve graduated from novice.”

“To what?”

If Jihoon had another hand to spare it would be putting a finger to his lip in thought. “Well, based on that mighty leap today… Flyboy.”

He seriously doubts this is an actual ghost busting rank, but he’s happy for the badinage. They make surprisingly good progress now that they’re outside—Woojin feels like he’s actually absorbing energy from all the life around him to replenish what it had taken to outrun death. Eventually they cross the expansive grounds and approach a gravel road that leads into a deciduous tree thicket and out of the property. Once they reach the side of the road Jihoon slips the bags off his shoulder with a tired sigh.

“Okay concussion king, I owe you one protocol."

Woojin stops, more under the command of the body supporting him than by any decision of his. They’ve been balancing their collective weight against each other pretty much since the banishment, which is a very nice way of saying Woojin is relying purely on Jihoon for any forward movement.

“Do you know what your name is?” Jihoon asks formulaically, still holding him steady by the shoulders but leaving his side to face him directly.

“... Sungwoon.” Woojin says with a shit-eating grin. Jihoon's eyes bug out in shock before seeing the look on his face. “Just kidding, I’m Woojin.”

“Nice to meet you Woojin, you’re a moron. Do you know where we are?”

He thinks hard, but he can feel his head pounding to the same beat as his heart and gets distracted by that. “Haunted mansion.”

Jihoon seems to weigh this answer against the one he wanted and eventually nods. “That counts, I guess. Do you know what day it is?”

“Sunday.”

“It’s Monday. What’s my name?”

“Park Jihoon.” Woojin answers without missing a beat, casting Jihoon a look that he hopes expresses, _‘who’s the idiot now, eh?’_

Chortling to himself, Jihoon shakes his head fondly. “Okay, last question. Are you going to object if I ask you to do something foolish and perilous again?”

“Probably not.” Woojin answers honestly, shooting him a bashful grin. 

Jihoon sighs and pokes Woojin lightly on the forehead. “You are concussed, my friend.”

Gingerly Jihoon lowers him to the ground in a sitting position before standing back up with a small groan. He takes out his phone and holds a hand on his hip as he looks at the screen. “I’m going to call an ambulance, but… service is spotty as hell.”

“Well, all good haunted houses _are_ in the boonies...” Woojin comments airily, plucking a stray shard of glass from his forearm.

“This may take—AH! Okay I got… wait—oh wait I got something. Hold on…” Jihoon leaves Woojin on the ground to wander around, looking for a signal. “Hoollllllllddd on.”

A small gust of wind blows over Woojin, causing him to curl up for warmth. He’s been cold since the mansion even though the temperature outside is rather warm for autumn. _Blood loss. Blood is hot, less blood is less hot,_ Woojin reasons to himself.

Yeah, maybe he should go get his head checked out.

“HAH!” Jihoon’s exclamation comes from farther away than Woojin thought he was and he looks out of his curl to see his partner some ten meters away in the middle of the road, holding his phone up to the sky as high as he can despite knowing that’s not actually going to help reception. “Hooo, okay. Okay here we go, calling for aid.”

While he chats with a dispatch agent Woojin curls up again, hissing as he stretches his wounds. He’s almost secured himself in a comfortable fetal position when he hears Jihoon’s footsteps crunching over the gravel. Soon the footfalls rain quicker and harder as though Jihoon was now running.

“Whoa, hey what’s up? You okay?” His voice is closer now. “The ambulance is coming, should be here within half hour—that’s what we get for being this far—hey. Woojin. Flyboy. What’s wrong, are you cold?”

Jihoon is now very close but Woojin stays tucked in his ball of warmth and garbles something untranslatable.

“Hey, eyes on me for a second, okay?” Jihoon asks gently, and Woojin unfolds slightly in order to sluggishly meet his gaze. “Here, you need to hydrate—” After digging in his bag for a moment, Jihoon extracts a water bottle and unscrews the cap for Woojin before holding it out. “Seriously, drink it.”

Woojin nods, fully unfolding himself and settling into a cross legged position, accepting the bottle and taking a long draft. By the time he brings the bottle down Jihoon is _much closer to him_ , leaning completely into his space with a determined set to his brows and sparkle in his eyes. 

“W-what are—”

“—getting the glass out of your face.” Jihoon cuts in, brooking no argument. Slowly, carefully, he starts picking glass slivers out of Woojin’s skin and with each new piece of bloody glass Jihoon adds to his pile his expression darkens into something irritated and withholding. It's cute, but also Not Good and shouldn't be happening right now. They won, it's cool. Blood is blood and glass is glass and Jihoon is amazing. 

“Not your fault.” Woojin grunts, hoping he’s interpreting Jihoon’s stormy mood correctly.

“Well, yeah, it _really_ is." Bingo. "There were less dangerous options, there had to be, or I could have spent more time… I don’t know. We could have just— _not_ gone through with it.” Jihoon speaks quickly, breath ghosting over Woojin’s lips. He’s not quite sure what he’s supposed to look at while Jihoon tends to him like this, but those pretty eyes seem like an acceptable focal point. Not the concussion talking but that is neither here nor there.

Except it is there _and_ here, Jihoon is way too close to him and this is likely the first time Jihoon has not only initiated physical contact but continued it—even if it _is_ because Woojin was pretty much about to die. “Still not your fault.”

Jihoon shakes his head minutely before silence falls. It’s one of those fall afternoons when the trees are still bursting with colors and the cloudless sky blazes so blue it looks purple. Slowly but surely they relax enough to hear the the rustle of leaves or the cry of a crow; begin to smell the dry, fallen leaves and crisp autumn air. It’s almost enough to lull Woojin into sleep.

“Thank you.” He murmurs after a few minutes, quietly so as not to disturb their well-earned peace.

Freezing in his systematic glass plucking, Jihoon locks eyes with him for two whole seconds before his gaze snaps back down to check Woojin’s body for any remaining shards. “Don’t thank me. This is just basic human decency.”

Jihoon looks softer now, almost fond, his face flushed from something a bit more than simple bashfulness. His goggles are still slung around his neck and it looks like a peckish horse actually mistook his sweaty straw-colored hair for an actual haystack for how considerably messy it is. His bottom lip is very red and slightly swollen from chewing on it while fretting over Woojin and while Jihoon does carry two rolls of duct tape and apparently a flamethrower with him at all times as a matter of course, he _never_ remembers to pack chapstick.

It’s all very human and he is not basic.

Suddenly it’s imperative to Woojin that Jihoon knows this, so: “Please, you are the least basic human I know.”

Jihoon’s lips tug up into a smile. “Just hold on until the ambulance gets here.”

“Still don’t think that’s necessary.”

“You fucking failed your concussion test, Woojin. We’re going to the hospital.”

After plucking out all the glass he can see, Jihoon leans back out of his space and Woojin is not _quite_ sure but he thinks he may have leaned forward a bit to keep the intimate distance. _I really hope I didn’t actually do that._

(He did.)

Luckily Jihoon doesn’t seem to notice and crawls lazily around Woojin’s slumped form to see if there was any damage to this back.

“ _S_ _eriously?_ What did you do, swim through a pool of glass?” Forgetting himself for a moment, Jihoon smacks Woojin hard on his bleeding shoulder and he gasps with the tiniest little whine.

“Ah! Shit, sorry, wow, I’m just not going to touch you anymore.”

Woojin wishes he had a say in that decision. Maybe he does. “I mean, I’m pretty sure you only got like half the glass out—n-not that I’m not grateful, just—”

“Hush little hedgehog, I got you.” Jihoon interrupts distractedly and it’s very easy for Woojin to imagine him chewing the inside of his cheek as he focuses on the damage. “Aaassh okay, this one is… this one’s going to hurt a little. A big little. A lot. It’s just going to be bad.” Jihoon informs, lightly touching a spot on Woojin’s back near a large shard embedded in his upper back.

“It all hurts, just don’t smack me agaiNHGHHRRH—” With no warning, Jihoon rips the long shard out of his shoulder blade.

He turns to look over his shoulder with a betrayed expression only to see Jihoon inspecting the long crystal shard with an interesting mix of scientific curiosity and mild panic. It’s about the length of his thumb, more than half of it covered in Woojin’s blood. “Yeah. We’re chalking this up as an utter failure.”

 _Huh? We won though._ They got the gilded hair barrette and busted the ghost—those are the two elements of the bounty on the Ghost Widow. Disperse her and steal back an heirloom hair clip, both accomplished with (bloody) style. How is this a failure?

“Because _you could have died._ No, not even, you were _about to be killed._ And don’t look at me at me like that—you know you said that out loud, right?” That fond expression is back on Jihoon’s face.

Okay so maybe he did. Woojin faces forward again and stares out past the gravel road and over the rolling hills of yellowing grass before them. He can hear Jihoon drop the monster shard on the pile with a light _clink_. “It’s not like this is the first time we almost kicked it…”

As these words leave Woojin’s mouth something clicks in his mind (or heart, he really doesn’t know anymore) that doesn't make immediate sense. Things were a little different this time. Jihoon was off in springing the trap, Jihoon miscalculated his astral chemistry, Jihoon had him blindly piss off a psychopathic specter without much forethought. 

Jihoon didn't have the best busting day, Woojin gets that, but the idea of blaming him for it is absurd. It didn’t even cross his mind. It's a little tiny bit more important to him that he figures out what's got Jihoon's brain all twisted, and if Woojin is somehow the cause he wants to fix it. 

“You want to know the worst part?” Jihoon asks with a sullen laugh of self-deprecation.

Woojin chuckles. “Worse than blood loss and concussion? Worse than all our property damage?”

“The cherry on top.” Jihoon tugs another shard out of his back, adds it to the pile with a clink. “I checked... We didn’t actually get any footage.”

…

… figures.

“So yeah, okay, definitely a failure.” Woojin admits after a long pause, pleased when Jihoon laughs behind him.

“Some pair we are.” Jihoon sulks, slipping right back into his self-loathing or self-flagellation or some other equally ridiculous punishment he’s inflicting on himself for putting Woojin in a touch more danger than usual.

Woojin doesn’t like it. “Hey, we just beat a Cat. 5.”

Jihoon hums lightly, as though admitting the fact.

“I think you may have elevated the entire art of astral-spectral chemistry.”

“Hoo, you think?” They’re still not facing each other but Woojin can hear the smile in Jihoon’s voice as he responds. Wow, at this rate Woojin might actually cheer him up.

“And like, I definitely got my steps in today so that’s a win for me.”

Jihoon’s laughter almost drowns out the sound of an approaching siren and both flick their heads in the direction of the noise.

“Yes! Oh man, they’re early.” Jihoon shoots to his feet using Woojin’s chewed up shoulders as a platform. While he goes to collect the bags Woojin remains seated, tucking his cold hands under his armpits for some cheap warmth. He blames the concussion for wanting that proximity again. 

Eventually the ambulance reaches the entrance to the large property and Woojin can see glimpses of red and blue lights flashing through the trees. He starts to struggle to his feet (maybe making it a bit melodramatic so Jihoon would come help him again) and has to hold himself in a half-crouch when a debilitating headrush almost sends him toppling forward. His partner doesn’t even notice.

Jihoon has wandered into the road and waves his arms in wide arcs at the incoming ambulance, jumping up and down as though that will summon them faster. After a few moments he cups his hands around his mouth and (quite accurately) imitates the sound of the siren. Once he finally finds his footing Woojin covers his ears with his hands with a large wince. Turns out sirens are _loud._

Almost as though he had projected his thoughts to the approaching EMTs they shut off the noise but keep the lights flashing. It's slightly better. Woojin is about to join Jihoon out in the road when the pile of bloody glass catches his eye. It’s not even that big—every piece seemed much larger when Jihoon was pulling them out of his flesh. Woojin kicks the pile moodily as the ambulance rolls to a neat stop two meters in front of Jihoon.

“Did somebody order a party bus?” Calls a charismatic voice. Woojin moves closer to see an unfairly handsome EMT in the driver’s seat, leaning his head out of the window with a bright grin. Riding shotgun is another remarkably good-looking young man who seems both endeared and embarrassed by his partner as he shakes his head and mutters something too quiet for Woojin to hear.

He catches the driver’s rebuttal, though. “Well it’s not like we don’t have enough drugs in here.”

Jihoon appears at Woojin's side silently and if he weren’t drained of a dangerous amount of body fluids he might have jumped when he felt Jihoon’s warm hand on the small of his back. It’s something more than mere steadying but not quite as tender as when they were alone. He leans back into the touch all the same.

The two paramedics exit the ambulance, the driver with about twice as much grace as his partner. He steps forward to meet Woojin and Jihoon while the taller, clearly younger one circles around the ambulance to open the back doors.

“Right!” The EMT claps his hands together once before rubbing them together. “Which one of you is, and I quote, _‘filled with glass and cutely concussed’_?”

Jihoon’s hand shoots off Woojin’s back as though burned.

The EMT answers his own question: “Probably the bloody one, eh? Guanlin! Prepare the gauze! Come around to the back so we can patch you up a bit before trucking you off to get that noggin checked, okay? My name is Seongwoo and I’m here to save you.”

“Don’t worry, he knows what he’s doing.” The other EMT, Guanlin, comments lightly, sticking his skinny head out from behind the ambulance and beckoning them over. As soon as they reach him two pairs of arms usher Woojin to sit on the back bumper of the open trunk and Guanlin drags a hospital-grade first aid kit next to Woojin with a little grin.

When Guanlin straightens up again, Woojin (and Jihoon, if that small gasp means anything) is momentarily blown away by both his youth and his height. He then flicks his gaze up to Seongwoo and realizes he’s not merely standing next to Jihoon, he’s _posing._ Both men are notably tall and both actually look like full-time models moonlighting as paramedics. Then there’s Jihoon—despite the fact that his engineering gloves, goggles, and smudge of (Woojin’s) blood on his cheek give off an oddball vibe he still looks like he’s in the middle of filming a steampunk HBO series. 

Woojin is just covered in blood. Nice.

Guanlin approaches him with a cotton swab soaked in rubbing alcohol and Woojin instinctively leans away but submits to his fate once he looks up and his eyes meet Jihoon’s no-nonsense, ‘ _l_ _et him heal you or I will hurt you’_ glare.

“The more you flinch the more it’ll hurt,” Guanlin warns lightly, and Woojin manages to endure the first few pokes and prods before he ends up snarling at him when he presses too harshly.

“So…” Seongwoo starts, crossing his arms over his chest and tapping a toe rhythmically on the ground. He looks over at Jihoon and his eyes catch on his goggles before he takes a peek inside Jihoon’s open engineering bag with a small nod of understanding. “Huh. You know what, I don’t want to know the details.”

“I do.” Guanlin pouts under his breath, done with his disinfecting and now deftly circling Woojin’s head with a roll of gauze. “You both smell like smoke and death. What on earth happened?”

Well… “Exploding lamps.”

“Marble railing.” Jihoon adds without missing a beat.

“There may have been a large _boom._ ”

Guanlin _‘ahh’_ s quietly as though those are perfectly acceptable answers and fixes the gauze in place with a little tap. Seongwoo just laughs heartily. “Alright, alright, into the back you go, Guanlin you’re pretty much done, right?”

While Woojin awkwardly turns around and more or less crawls back towards the gurney in the ambulance, Jihoon starts playing with his fingers absentmindedly. “Do I...?"

“Yes, you get to ride in the back with him.” Seongwoo patronizingly answers the unfinished question. “Just be good and help clean him up, okay? Guanlin, I’m pretty sure this little one can do the rest of your job. Be a dear and hang out in the cab with me.”

With a little smile of thanks Jihoon hops into the ambulance. After Seongwoo slams the back doors shut both he and Guanlin hop into their seats and buckle up. Jihoon digs around in the first-aid kit for more gauze, only turning to Woojin when he clears his throat for attention.

“So _no footage,_ huh? Like, at all?” Woojin has his legs crossed at the ankles and is leaning back against the gurney with a valiant attempt at swagger despite the fact that he’s about halfway dead.

With a big sigh of defeat Jihoon approaches him with gauze and swabs and hops on the gurney, crossing his legs before settling comfortably by his side. “No footage. We’re just lucky that shit didn’t scramble our phones.”

[Looking forward to a good thirty minutes of eavesdropping on the kids in the back, Seongwoo starts the ambulance and honks the horn once before starts speaking distortedly into the ambulance loud speaker. “Hooookay, _next stop: Shichikokoyama hospital!"_

“Hell of a time to quote Totoro…” Guanlin laughs as they begin to drive down the road and out of the late Ghost Widow’s property.

“It’s about putting good energy into the universe, my young friend. From what I’ve seen our little adrenaline boyfriends back there are going to need it.”]

After adjusting his balance against the car’s inertia Woojin opts to join Jihoon in sitting on the gurney. Once he does Jihoon gently grabs one of his arms by the elbow and starts to clean the cuts on his forearm. It’s nowhere near as professional or humane as Guanlin but Woojin feels more comfortable with his ministrations than he had with the gangly youth.

On a whim he takes out the golden hair clip from his pocket: the only thing they actually managed to gain from this month’s adventure. It really is quite lovely and might fetch a pretty price at auction but they have to return it to the family to get their bounty—a reduced bounty, most likely slashed because without footage they technically can’t _prove_ they busted the Ghost Widow. What a mess.

Jihoon is now carefully wrapping Woojin’s arm with gauze, mindful not to bind it too tightly. He knows what he's doing (Woojin can't even imagine how many times Jihoon has had to patch himself up over his hunting career) though maybe he could be a touch gentler about it. After watching his fingers work for a few seconds, Woojin trails his dazed gaze up Jihoon’s arms, past the bloodstained hoodie and cracked goggles, all the way up to a lock of cornsilk hair stubbornly sticking out at an odd angle.

After clicking the barrette open and closed a few times, Woojin reaches over and fixes the clip around Jihoon's wayward tuft of hair before realizing he really did it. 

“What are y—” Jihoon starts, but Woojin decides to commit and shushes him quietly before fixing the little ponytail again so it looks a bit cuter. As cute as he can with Woojin’s blood in his hair, anyway.

“Okay then.” Jihoon mutters, letting Woojin do what he wants and turning back to the arm he was wrapping. “I really hope you remember how weird you’re being after all this.”

“I will if you remember how nice you’re being.”

“No deal.” Jihoon shoots back before humming lightly and tying off the gauze. He snaps demandingly at Woojin’s other arm, doggedly avoiding eye contact and  _totally_ blushing. 

After considering the situation for a moment (he is, after all, committed to this proximity now and he'd be a fool to pass up the opportunity to push it) Woojin decides to just turn his whole body in towards Jihoon and holds out his arm in front of his chest for him to tend to. They’re intimately close again which is ideal because Woojin needs the warmth. And the person, probably.

[“My _god,_ they’re cute.” Seongwoo comments quietly, clutching his heart with a dramatic hand and casting a sideways glance at Guanlin. Despite his protege's outward chicness he is also obviously listening in on the pair in the back and is as invested in it as Seongwoo.

“It’s been awhile since we’ve been called out here.” Guanlin says conversationally before looking back at Woojin and Jihoon through the rear-view mirror. “Do you think they actually bagged the Widow?”

“Nah, that bitch has been queen for too long to fall prey to a couple of boyfriends like that.” Seongwoo laughs, turning his eyes back to the road ahead. “Then again, there were some seriously cool toys in blondie’s bag.”

After a moment’s consideration, Guanlin speaks again. “I think they actually got her.”

“Dream on, young one.”]

Finally starting to warm up, Woojin tries and fails to mask a huge yawn. It makes his head spin.

Pausing in the middle of wrapping Woojin’s other arm, Jihoon studies him for a moment before calling out to the front. “Hey, is he allowed to sleep or take pain meds or anything?”

“Yes sleep.” Guanlin answers at the exact same moment Seongwoo orders, “No painkillers.”

“Yes good.” Woojin mutters with a dopey grin. Pushing his luck, he leans sideways into Jihoon, smiling when he scoffs loudly at the intrusion.

“You're sitting on a bed with wheels, there's no need to sleep on me.” He bites, betraying himself immediately by slipping an arm around Woojin’s back to secure him. His words and actions haven't really been syncing up and it's making Woojin almost giddy. Can concussions conjure feelings?

“You’re so noisy.” Woojin breathes close enough to Jihoon's neck to make him shiver. 

“A-and you’re getting blood all over me, gross.”

“Noisy _and_ warm.” Woojin snuggles in a bit more before closing his eyes with a deep sigh. Jihoon smells like blood and metal but also something fresh and sweet. He can't think of four words that describe him better besides something else really sappy and wholly inappropriate for a business partnership. Woojin falls asleep to a lingering understanding of the widow's departed soul and the gentle, living heartbeat of his partner. 

By the time Jihoon ascertains Woojin is really asleep the weight of today’s efforts has settled over him like a lead blanket and Jihoon actually lets his eyelids droop just a bit. He concentrates on smoothing the gauze around Woojin's arms and forehead to keep himself awake but by the time he realizes how many personal boundaries he's crossing with the tenderness Jihoon is practically asleep. That's not  _his_ hand running through his (very brave, very stupid, very capable and _very_ charming) partner's bloody hair—it couldn't be, because Park Jihoon doesn't  _pet_ _._ He kicks supernatural ass and crafts  _bombs_  for fuck's sake.

And, well, also falls asleep professionally cuddling his partner, but they're not going to talk about that.

[“Are they asleep? Oh my god they fell asleep on each other.” Seongwoo whispers loudly, obtrusively looking back through the rear-view mirror. “You might be right, I think they busted the Widow.”

Guanlin raises an eyebrow at him. “Why the change of heart?”

After casting another glance at them through his mirror, Seongwoo shrugs. “Failure inspires sleeplessness, not naptime. _That_ is a nap of accomplishment if I’ve ever seen one.”

“I think you’re right.” Now that it’s been ascertained that they’re asleep, Guanlin turns his head back to get a look at them.

The two ghost hunters are half-cuddling, half-sprawled on the gurney and after a moment’s deliberation Guanlin gets up from his seat and crawls into the back. He extracts a shock blanket from one of the supply cupboards and shakes it out before draping it over them neatly, tucking the corners in and smoothing out the creases with a protective maturity that belies his youth.  

“How sweet of you.” Seongwoo coos, welcoming Guanlin back to the front with a few pats on his shotgun seat. “Think we should call on them to deal with the poltergeist in the overnight ward?”

Guanlin hums to himself with a happy little nod. “If they really did tangle with a Cat. 5 and come out with all body parts, I think they can handle our little spook.”

“Good, because I already swiped this from blondie’s bag:” Seongwoo holds up a surprisingly professional business card. Taking it with a smile, Guanlin laughs out loud when he reads it.

 _Park & Park Paranormal Investigations, LLC. _ _]_

**Author's Note:**

> onglin onglin onglin dont touch me they're the cutest hyung-maknae duo fucking fight me (close second 2ji)
> 
> [HEROIC] Personal Challenge: 10K+ words [COMPLETED]
> 
> let me know if you guys want more of this charming post-death defying duo!!! cuz i cant get a prompt like this without creating the entire fucking reality of it, this world is MADE


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